Kresge Arts in Detroit and WDET have partnered to present a virtual artist salon series featuring the 2021 Kresge Artist Fellows and Gilda Awardees. This nine part series includes never before seen video presentations by awarded metro Detroit artists and writers followed by a public Q+A and conversation moderated by WDET’s Ryan Patrick Hooper.

Brian Day is a third generation Detroit native. He discovered photography in 2008 through the suggestion of a colleague and began exploring documentary and fine art projects around the city using film and digital cameras. Day cites the work of Ansel Adams, Gordon Parks, Michael Kenna, and Alexander Rodchenko as early influences. His work has been exhibited both locally and internationally, and published in Scientific American, Hour Detroit, Esquire, Smithsonian, CNN, The Detroit Free Press, The Detroit News, and Detroit Metro Times, among others.

Jessica Frelinghuysen creates performances and participatory installations to reconcile complex, everyday social situations. Her work has been shown at the Mattress Factory Museum, the Broad Art Museum, and the Art Gallery of Windsor, as well as on numerous sidewalks and in various social spaces. Jessica has been awarded residencies at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Sculpture Space, and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. She teaches at the University of Michigan. You might encounter Frelinghuysen performing in her Sound Collecting Suit and recording interviews on the streets of her hometown, Hamtramck.

Cyrus Karimipour received his MFA in photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art, and is represented by the David Klein Gallery in Detroit. His photographs have been exhibited at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Light Work, and internationally in galleries in Germany, Austria, Lithuania, and China. Karimipour’s work has been published in Harper’s Magazine and Contact Sheet, and can be found in the collections of Light Work, New York; Center for Contemporary Art, New Mexico; Lishui Photography Museum, China; and La Fototeca, Guatemala.